Get Gaming with RetroPie

One of the most interesting uses for the Raspberry Pi is as a retro gaming center, and RetroPie is a pre-built OS that gives you all of the tools you need to play virtually any 8-bit game you can think of, and quite a few 16-bit ones too.

Build a Wireless Access Point

Want to learn about network hardening, or perhaps create a free wireless access point for friends? Do you need to extend the range of your existing home wireless network? If so, the Raspberry Pi can be configured with the Pi-Point image giving you a wireless device that you can tweak and tinker with.

Enjoy Your Favorite Tracks with Pi MusicBox

Using Wouter van Wijk’s Pi MusicBox image you can build an AirPlay-friendly speaker with a built-in connection to Spotify, Google Music and SoundCloud. Forget piping music through your tablet or phone, or even from your TV set. Internet radio is the future of music, and you can have it hands with a Raspberry Pi.

With just a Raspberry Pi Model B, some cabling and a bit of soldering, this Internet-connected radio will revolutionise how you enjoy music, and can be constructed in just a few hours.

While it’s fair to say that visitors might run into problems with site performance if you attempt to host a popular, large website on your Raspberry Pi, the PressPi image has been “Meticulously tested and optimized for performance and ease of use” according to the website, which offers the most recent WordPress version 4.x.

We reckon it makes a great weekend project, one that you can download from www.presspi.com, and if you want to use it more extensively it should be perfect for local development and testing.

Install Kano OS, the kid-centric learning platform

Want to teach your children the basics of computer use and programming? It’s a skill that will prove vital in the future, so having the Kano OS image ready to use with your Raspberry Pi is a great idea. Kano is an open source OS designed for the Raspberry Pi, available free to download on its own as well as being included in the Kano kit, which features a Pi, keyboard, Wi-Fi dongle, cabling and other useful bits.

Build a NAS with OpenMediaVault

MakeUseOf’s DIY editor James Bruce previously showed you how to build a NAS with a Raspberry PiTurn Your Raspberry Pi Into An NAS BoxTurn Your Raspberry Pi Into An NAS BoxDo you have a couple of external hard drives lying around and a Raspberry Pi? Make a cheap, low powered networked attached storage device out of them. While the end result certainly won't be as...Read More, but the world of network attached storage has moved on somewhat since then. OpenMediaVault is now where it’s at, turning your Raspberry Pi into a fully-fledged file server. With this NAS setup you can save your family photos, music and videos to a connected HDD, ready to share across your home network.

The benefits of such a setup are obvious, especially if you’re using a media server such as Plex installed on a PC or a second Raspberry Pi.

Love MineCraft?

The blocky building world of Minecraft just keeps on getting bigger, wrapping its retro-styled tentacles around virtually any platform you can think of, and the Raspberry Pi is no different. MineCraft: Pi Edition is a ready-made server for designed multiplayer Minecraft joy, and you can download it for your Pi at pi.minecraft.net.

Raspberry Pi 2 owners, meanwhile, will be pleased to know that the newly relaunched XBMC is available for their device. Now known as Kodi, this too is available as an image to be written to SD card and inserted in your Raspberry Pi, or installed from within an existing Raspian OS.

Emulate AirPlay with Shairport Sync

An open source reverse engineered version of Apple’s AirPlay, Shairport Sync is an alternative to Pi MusicBox, and enables you to stream audio from a computer or phone to your Raspberry Pi, where the signal is then output to the connected speaker.

Once installed, the Shairport Sync image is preset to act as a receiver and player for your music collection, put is particularly suited to iOS users who like to keep a good selection of tunes on their iPhones or iPads.

Build a Pirate Radio Transmitter, Arr

Avast, scurvy seadogs! While pirate radio might immediately inspire memories of black music in the 1980s and 1990s, or even seaborne radio stations in the 1960s and 1970s, it’s possible to use your Raspberry Pi as a radio transmitter using the PiFM image.